‘school life’
Stream it on Netflix.
Movies about holy teachers trying to make a difference in high-risk schools are a dime a dozen, but few hit the feel-good principle with as much grit or humor as this French comedy. In “School Life,” the radiant Zita Hanrot plays Samia Zibra, a newly arrived high school counselor in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, where the population is poor and immigrants skewed.
Directed by rapper Grand Corps Malade (Fabien Marsaud) and hip-hop dancer Mehdi Idir – both raised in Saint-Denis – School Life is a moving portrait of life in the French suburbs and a sharp critique of an education system that tells underprivileged children that they their dreams aren’t worth it. But above all, the film is a rousing ode to the bubbly humor and ingenuity of students hardened by hard life.
Laughing out loud set pieces relish the audacity with which the children make improbable excuses for their delinquency (“an antelope came my way”) and the inventive humor of their insults (one teacher is described as “Trump crossed with Van Gogh”). Usually played by non-professional actors, the students enliven this ensemble film with their charm and comedic timing, while Marsaud and Idir avoid sentimentalism with an invigorating dose of lived-in realism.
Several times while watching “Captains of Zaatari”, I forgot it was a documentary; The film’s wonderfully stylized direction – and the intimacy it detaches from its subjects – makes it feel like a fable. Ali El Arabi’s feature film follows two teenagers, Fawzi and Mahmoud, who live in Zaatari, a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. Their displacement has robbed them of many things – their homes, their education, their relatives – but not their love of football. The sport becomes the place of their hopes when an initiative called “Syrian Dream” gives them the chance to travel to Qatar and participate in an international under-17 tournament.
El Arabi’s film, which follows Fawzi and Mahmoud’s journey from their camp to Qatar and back, doesn’t explain much about the refugees’ predicament. Instead, it takes us into their emotions – their anticipation, grit, disappointments – with snippets of their heart-to-heart conversations and golden-lit close-ups of their faces. Sometimes the documentary unfolds like a sports drama, with exciting scenes from the tournament, but at its core ‘Captains of Zaatari’ is about the brotherly bond between Fawzi and Mahmoud. Rather than the aggression or competitiveness you’d expect from teenage athletes, the two boys are tender to each other and grateful to be able to fulfill their modest dreams together.
‘the sharks’
Stream it on Tubi.
This coming-of-age – or rather coming-of-rage – drama by Uruguayan director Lucia Garibaldi undulates with the double threat of adolescent desires and ocean danger. We first meet the tomboy-esque 14-year-old Rosina (Romina Bentancur) as she defiantly runs into the sea, her father chasing her. She searches the water with her eyes and just as she reluctantly turns away, a shark fin appears among the waves.
Our heroine lives in a small seaside town, where the arrival of the sharks bodes ill for the local fishing community. Rosina’s growing fixation on sharks reflects her slow obsession with Joselo (Federico Morosini), a lustful young man who works for her father and invites her on a date in his garage.
“The Sharks” is about predators and prey (of different strains), though the balance between the two shifts unpredictably in this hypnotic, always surprising film. There is no moralism or sensationalism in Garibaldi’s approach to the dangerous sensations of female sexuality. Instead, her camera still and sharply observes her young protagonist, causing the film’s power struggles to unfold on her unfathomable sunburnt face.
‘The dog that wouldn’t be quiet’
Stream it on Mubi.
This Argentine tragicomedy includes a series of black-and-white vignettes that are deceptive in their simplicity and profound in their absurdity. The title of Ana Katz’s feature comes from the first two vignettes, in which Sebas, an illustrator in his thirties in Buenos Aires, is scolded by his neighbors about his dog’s constant nagging, then forced to quit his job. if he insists on taking the dog. to work.
After a strange and tragic turn – beautifully rendered in an illustrated interlude – the film jumps through a series of episodes from Sebas’s life over the years, including his stint with a farmer’s cooperative, his mother’s wedding and his own romance and eventual fatherhood. Sebas’ various hairstyles become our markers for the passage of time, though the actor, Daniel Katz, maintains an endearing stoicism throughout—a sort of humble dedication to take on whatever life throws at him.
In one of the last vignettes, Sebas and his family navigate a dystopian Buenos Aires where the air breathes only 1.2 meters above the ground. The rich walk around with bubble-shaped oxygen containers; the poor squat and crawl on the floor. This is where “The Dog Who Would’t Be Quiet” emerges as a clever (and timely) meditation on people’s resilience in a world that seems forever on the brink of disaster, be it capitalist or ecological .
‘Against the wind’
Rent or buy it on Amazon.
This Chinese dramedy sits somewhere between Jia Zhangke’s genre-inspired social portraiture and Richard Linklater’s annoyingly slack cinema. Wei Shujun’s autobiographical feature debut follows the listless adventures of Kun (Zhou You), a stylish, mullet-wearing loafer studying to be a sound recordist at a Beijing film school. Kun and his friend Tong (Tong Lin Kai), both lovely sincere and insanely mischievous, go crazy in class and spend their free time driving around Kun’s rickety jeep in an effort to make some quick cash. Their plans involve enabling the misguided musical ambitions of a wealthy construction magnate and secretly selling the exam papers of Kun’s mother, a schoolteacher.
Amid all these high jinks, the two try to make art like their heroes – Hong Sangsoo and Wong Kar-wai are referenced, among others – while helping a pretentious classmate with his graduation film. A self-reflexive meditation on cinephilia, Wei’s freewheeling film feels lighthearted and naturalistic, yet precisely composed. Each frame is bursting with socio-cultural details – from the American map sticker on Kun’s jeep to the Chinese hip-hop the characters rap to during their car journeys – that give us a sense of the local moorings and global aspirations of a new generation of Chinese youth from the middle class .
